


Buffy and Xander Character Comparison  - Dealing with the Monster

by shadowkat67



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Essays, Gen, Literary References & Allusions, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-13
Updated: 2009-07-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:40:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22368853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowkat67/pseuds/shadowkat67
Summary: Buffy and Xander been fighting external monsters most of their lives. The vamps who rise from the grave with fangs or the ugly Master or Adam, ME's version of Frankenstein. These monsters, while scary, they can handle. It's their own internal monster that they continue to fear and struggle with. Perhaps this is why they are attracted to monsters?  Subconsciously they seek someone who can overpower or handle their monster?  And maybe this is why Buffy has never been romantically interested in Xander? Because she's afraid of what she can do to him? And maybe this is part of the reason Xander has always been attracted to Buffy? Because he believes he'll never be able to hurt her like his father continuously hurts his mother? At least not physically or verbally, she's proven more than once to be a match for him.
Kudos: 6
Collections: Buffyverse Top 5





	Buffy and Xander Character Comparison  - Dealing with the Monster

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2002 and initially published on the voy forums

Been thinking a lot about monsters this year. The internal and external ones, possibly because I've come face to face with a few and as a result find myself identifying quite a bit with the characters of BvTs, specifically Buffy and Xander.

As a child, I remember escaping my parents' living room whenever Space 1999 came on. I'd go outside or up to my room, because I was terrified of the monsters that were portrayed on it. The monsters that scared me the most were the ones people changed into, such as werewolves, or the Swamp Thing, or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I was more afraid of those monsters than ghosts, poltergeists, or flying insects. Now that I've come face to face with a few human monsters - I no longer fear the ones that occasionally appear on TV. It's the unseen, internal ones that scare me the most. You've seen them. The nice guy who turns into a rapist? The guy next door who is a serial killer? The preacher who has a yen for small boys? The prophet who likes to blow up buildings? You can't tell by looking at them that a monster lies beneath the surface.

Buffy and Xander have a similar dilemma. They have been fighting external monsters most of their lives. The vamps who rise from the grave with fangs or the ugly Master or Adam, ME's version of Frankenstein. These monsters, while scary, they can handle. It's their own internal monster that they continue to fear and struggle with. Perhaps this is why they are attracted to monsters? Subconsciously they seek someone who can overpower or handle their monster? And maybe this is why Buffy has never been romantically interested in Xander? Because she's afraid of what she can do to him? And maybe this is part of the reason Xander has always been attracted to Buffy? Because he believes he'll never be able to hurt her like his father continuously hurts his mother? At least not physically or verbally, she's proven more than once to be a match for him.

Buffy and Xander have both witnessed someone they loved turn into a monster and not just any type of monster - but a vicious cold blooded killer, who on the outside appears to be the same person they knew and loved. It happens to Xander first - in Harvest. In this episode, Xander and Buffy have gone to save Xander's best friend Jesse from vampires. Xander has known Jesse all his life. Xander follows Buffy into the tunnels and together they find Jesse, unshackle him, and start to lead him out, eventually reach a dead-end and discover vampires in pursuit. Apparently it was a trap and Jesse was the bait. Except for one minor thing:

> Jesse: Wait, wait. They brought me through here, there, there should be a way up. I hope! (Jesse leads them into a chamber.)  
>  Buffy: I don't think this is the way out!  
>  Xander: We can't fight our way back through those things. What do we do?  
>  Jesse: I got an idea. (vamps out) You can die!  
>  Xander: Jesse, man. I'm sorry.  
>  Jesse: Sorry? I feel good, Xander! I feel strong! I'm connected, man, to everything! I, I can hear the worms in the earth!  
>  Xander: That's a plus.  
>  Jesse: I know what the Master wants. I'll serve his purpose. That means you die. And I feed.  
>  Xander: Jesse, man. We're buds, don't you remember?  
>  Jesse: You're like a shadow to me now.

Later in the library, after Xander and Buffy have escaped the tunnels sans Jesse, Xander makes it known exactly how he feels about vampires: "I don't like vampires. I'm gonna take a stand and say they're not good." Xander never changes his mind on this. He can't. Think about it for a minute. Have you ever seen someone you thought you knew, even cared for, become a monster? Jesse looks normal. Like himself. Neither Buffy nor Xander can tell he's become a monster until he actually vamps.

Xander doesn't only have this experience with Jesse. He also has it with his first crush, outside of Buffy. It's no wonder to me that Xander prefers Buffy over Willow - Buffy is powerful, no man can hurt her, she is also very pretty, and unavailable. These things combined are very attractive to Xander. As Xander himself comments at one point - "I'll tell you this: people don't fall in love with what's right in front of them. People want the dream. What they can't have. The more unattainable, the more attractive."

In Teacher's Pet, Xander falls for a sexy attractive older teacher, who is unattainable or so he thinks. When she takes an interest in him - he goes for it much to his regret. She turns out to be a giant insect intent on mating with him and devoring him. This episode reminded me of legends I collected in Wales several years ago. In each legend, the woman is monsterous - she coaxes the man either into a deep well or devores him. She is a little like the Sirens in the Odyssey, that call out to sailors, seducing them to their deaths. A beautiful woman on the outside, a monster on the inside. She keeps up the illusion until she decides to mate. Xander barely escapes with Buffy's help.

The episode Angel - echoes this theme from the female point of view. Prior to this episode, a mysterious attractive stranger called Angel rescues Buffy from numerous situations. He warns her and disappears. Finally in ANGEL - the stranger saves her from a trio of assassins. She takes him home with her, because she believes they are now both in danger. He admits his attraction to her and in this scene actually kisses her. But unfortunately, like Xander's "Teacher", "Angel" is also more than he seems:

> Angel: All I can ever think about is how badly I want to kiss you.  
>  Buffy: Kiss me?  
>  Angel: I'm older than you, and this can't ever... I better go.  
>  Buffy: H-how much older?  
>  Angel: I should...  
>  Buffy: (approaches him) ...go... You said...(They kiss. They kiss again. They kiss passionately. She puts her arm around him. The kiss goes on for several moments. Angel suddenly pulls back and looks away.)  
>  Buffy: What? What is it? What's wrong? (He turns to face her and growls. She sees he has his game face on and screams. He takes a last look at her and jumps out of the window. He slides down the roof and off onto the ground. Buffy goes to the window and watches him run away. Her mother comes running into the room.)  
>  Willow: Angel's a vampire?

As Buffy's boyfriend Scott mentions in a much later episode (Beauty and The Beasts, Season 3 BvTS): "It's just that you never really know what's going on inside somebody. Do you? I mean, you think... if you care about them... But you never really do." The truth is - we don't know what lies beneath the surface of other people. We can only know what lies inside ourselves. They may look normal on the outside but really be a monster underneath. That said - there's more going on here than just an inability to see beneath the surface. There's also an innate attraction to what lies there, an attraction to the monster, whether it be an external or internal one. Buffy and Xander may initially flee from this attraction, but in later episodes they continue to go there (I could give a complete run - down but this is already too long). Xander seems to sense his problem before Buffy does, as he states at the end of Nightmares and then again in Inca Mummy Girl.

Nightmares:  


>   
> Willow: When Buffy was a vampire, you weren't still, like, attracted to her, were you?  
> Xander: Willow, how can you... I mean, that's really bent! She was... grotesque!  
> Willow: Still dug her, huh?  
> Xander: I'm sick, I need help.

Inca Mummy Girl:  


>   
> Xander: I just, present company excluded, I have the worst taste in women of anyone in the world, ever.  
> Buffy: Ampata wasn't evil. At least not to begin with, and... I-I do think she cared about you.  
> Xander: Yeah, but I think that whole sucking the life out of people thing would have been a strain on the relationship.

Here's the difference between Buffy and Xander: Buffy unlike Xander, has always been cognizant of her inner monster. She has nightmares about it. In the episode Nightmares - she dreams she becomes a vampire - pure killer, pure animal. She knows that's what lies inside her and she fights it constantly. As Faith, the rogue slayer, tells Buffy in Consequences (Season 3 after Faith accidentally killed a human):

> Faith: (grins evilly) Scares you, doesn't it?  
>  Buffy: Yeah, it scares me. Faith, you're hurting people. You're hurting yourself.  
>  Faith: (approaches Buffy) But that's not it. That's not what bothers you so much. What bugs you is you know I'm right. You know in your gut we don't need the law. We *are* the law. You know exactly what I'm about 'cause you have it in you, too.  
>  Buffy: No, Faith, you're sick.  
>  Faith: I've seen it, B. You've got the lust. And I'm not just talking about screwing vampires.  
>  Buffy: Don't you *dare* bring him into this.  
>  Faith: (taunting her) It was good, wasn't it? The sex? The danger? Bet a part of you even dug him when he went psycho.  
>  Buffy: No! (continues walking)  
>  Faith: (follows) See, you need me to toe the line because you're afraid you'll go over it, aren't you, B? You can't handle watching me living my own way, having a blast, because it tempts you! You know it could be you!

Buffy knows Faith is right on a deep level, part of her does get off on it. Buffy knows that the monster resides in her. She feels it inside her just as Dracula points out in Buffy vs. Dracula:

> DRACULA: Why else would I come here? For the sun? I came to meet the renowned ... killer.  
>  BUFFY: Yeah, I prefer the term slayer. You know, killer just sounds so...  
>  DRACULA: Naked?  
>  BUFFY: Like I ... paint clowns or something. I'm the good guy, remember?  
>  DRACULA: Perhaps, but your power is rooted in darkness. You must feel it.

He sees the monster inside Buffy, a monster she can hide from her friends and family but not from the demons she slays. The demons can handle the monster. They are monsters themselves. And it must get difficult being careful all the time, careful not to hurt people. Notice whenever she hugs Xander or Giles, they complain of hurting a rib? And what about Riley? Riley who asks her to hit him in Into the Woods after she discovers him with vamp trulls, but she doesn't dare do it. Riley who tries to fight with her, but every time they do maneuvers he gets hurt. And when he becomes "weak and kittenish", she begins to shut him out, protect him, partly from herself. As Spike points out to Riley in Into the Woods Season 5 Bvts: "The girl needs some monster in her man and that's not in your nature no matter how low you try to go."

But Riley doesn't understand it any more than Xander does, which is ironic, because of all the characters, Xander should. After all he has the same attraction - but unlike Buffy, he's never really understood why. Xander's monster is more hidden than Buffy's, not as obvious. But it does come out at times. As Faith states (Beauty and the Beasts Season 3):

> Faith: All men are beasts, Buffy.  
>  Buffy: Okay, I was hoping to not get that cynical till I was at least forty.  
>  Faith: It's not cynical. I mean, it's realistic. Every guy from... Manimal down to Mr. I-Love-The-English-Patient has beast in him. And I don't care how sensitive they act. They're all still just in it for the chase.

Hasn't Xander admitted as much? In The Pack - Xander gets possessed by a hyena which amplifies his inner beast or monster. It is the first glimpse the audience gets of Xander's dark side, a side he does not allow out. Granted most of it was the hyena, but he remembers it and refers to the experience later in Phases (Season 2), when the gang is looking for a Werewolf, stating that he knows what it's like to have an animal inside. In a sense he almost admits some responsibility for his beastlike behavior. Here's the most disturbing Xander scene from The Pack, the scene tells us something about Xander and Buffy:

(Xander growls and rolls Buffy over onto her back so he's on top now and has her arms pinned down.)Buffy: Get off of me.  
Xander: Is that what you really want? (Buffy struggles a bit) We both  
know what you really want. You want danger, don't cha? You like your men dangerous.  
Buffy: You're in trouble, Xander. You are infected with some hyena  
thing, it's like a demonic possession!  
Xander: Dangerous and mean, right? Like Angel. Your Mystery Guy. Well,  
guess who just got mean. Do you know how long... I've waited... until you'd stop pretending that we aren't attracted...(Buffy throws him off of her and quickly gets up to face him. He gets up, too, and begins to approach her as she backs away.) Until Willow... stops kidding herself that I could settle with anyone but you?  
Buffy: Look, Xander, I don't wanna hurt you...(He grabs her by the shoulders and pushes her against the vending machine.)  
Xander: Now do you wanna hurt me? (Buffy struggles, but the possessed Xander is too strong.) Come on, Slayer. I like it when you're scared. (She struggles a bit more.)The more I scare you, (sniffs her) the better you smell.

Xander clearly thinks on a deep subconscious level that Buffy prefers the Beast. She doesn't. She's afraid of the Beast in both herself and in the men she is attracted to. But she is more afraid of it in herself. She's also afraid - and here's the kicker - that she brings it out in her men. In Innocence (Season 2) the scene that continues to break my heart is the one after Angel turns evil, in which she asks Jenny - if it was her. If she was responsible. If she caused Angel to turn and Jenny says, hesitantly, she thinks so. Later with Riley, when she discovers him with the vamp trulls, she feels the same sense of revulsion and fear and also, although she denies it, blames herself. Even in the above scene where she tells Xander that it is the hyena talking, a part of her must be worrying that it's her.

Xander wonders the same thing about himself. He appears to be a demon magnet as Willow so aptly calls him in Something Blue: "Let's-let's look at your bio. Insect Lady, Mummy Girl, Anya.. You're a demon magnet."

Every woman he gets interested in has some sort of monster inside, even Buffy. Willow - he avoids - seeing her as weak. He doesn't really show any interest in her until she starts going out with OZ and practicing magicks, becoming both unavailable and oddly more powerful. Getting involved serves an additional purpose - it breaks things off with Cordy, a relationship that may be scaring him a little, possibily because Cordy reminds him of his mother? Or his relationship with her was beginning to remind him of his parents' relationship? In Restless - we begin to see what really scares Xander. Xander is in his parents' basement, hunting a way out, but all the paths he takes lead him right back there, except one - up the steps and directly to his parents.

> XANDER: (whispers) That's not the way out. (The door bursts open. Xander looks down at himself, then back up the stairs.)  
>  VOICE: What the hell is wrong with you?(Xander looks chastised.)(We see a man silhouetted in the doorway above. It's Xander's dad.)  
>  DAD: You won't come upstairs? What are you ... ashamed of us? Your mother's crying her guts out!  
>  XANDER: You don't understand.  
>  DAD: No. You don't understand. (Starts down the stairs, stomping angrily) The line ends here with us, and you're not gonna change that.(Xander looking down, unable to look at his dad.)  
>  DAD: You haven't got the heart.(Suddenly Dad shoves his hand into Xander's chest..)

A lot of people have written how weak and dumb Xander is. I beg to differ. I think he is actually quite bright and brave and strong. He is afraid of becoming his father. A man he has watched his entire life abuse his mother. A drunk and a blowhard and possibly a wife beater. As a result - Xander has deliberately chosen strong women. Women who can match him both verbally and physically. He prefers Buffy - because he knows he could never hurt her the way his father hurts his mother. But he falls for Anya - believing perhaps naively - that Anya is strong enough to take him. She was a demon after all. A 1000 years old. She used to punish men. If he steps out of line - she'll probably punish him. That is until he gets a glimpse of the future and realizes that he could hurt her far more than she could hurt him. In his vision - he sees himself making Anya miserable, he sees himself about to hit Anya over the head with a frying pan. Then after he returns and saves Anya from the demon - he watches over herhead his father torturing his mother in the background.

> XANDER: It wasn't you. (sighs) It wasn't you I was hating. (pauses) I had these thoughts, and ... fears before this. (Another beat. Xander stares at the floor.) Maybe we just went too fast.  
>  ANYA: Look, everybody has thoughts. It's natural, it doesn't mean that, that getting married is wrong.  
>  XANDER: I know, I know...  
>  ANYA: (desperate) Look, you're just shaken up, okay? You just calm down and we'll start over, okay? (Xander looks over at the main room. Shot of Xander's Parents yelling at each other. Mr. Harris is standing while Mrs. Harris sits in a chair.Shot of Xander watching.Closer shot of Xander's Dad yelling angrily. Pan down to Xander's Mom arguing back at him. It looks like he tries to hit her and she grabs his hand. Cut back to Xander still watching them. )  
>  XANDER: (tearful) We can't start over. If this is a mistake, it's forever, and ... I don't want to hurt you. Not that way. (Close shot on their hands separating, falling to their sides.) I'm sorry. (Anya crying) I am so sorry.

Xander is looking at his monster as he tells Anya that it's over. He later regrets this decision, but he made it not out of fear for himself so much as out of fear for Anya.  
He is afraid of becoming this monster. He is trying to fight it, but can he?

Buffy has the same problem. Since she returned from the grave she's felt less alive. Cold. More like a killer. Scared to show this to her friends, she goes to the one person who can understand, a vampire - who in reality isn't a person at all, at least not according to her training. As Giles states in ANGEL: "A vampire isn't a person at all. (clears his throat) It may have the movements, the, the memories, even the personality of the person that it took over, but i-it's still a demon at the core, there is no halfway." So who better to spend time with, to risk being the monster with, than another monster? "Vampires are monsters (after all), they make Monster movies about them" (Xander - Intervention, BvtS Season5). She doesn't have to worry about hurting him. She doesn't have to worry about being the monster with him. And she's never felt more like a monster than she did when she came out of her own grave.

Unfortunately - Spike hasn't been acting much like a monster of late. And she's starting to care for him. Not love necessarily. But care. At least enough to know that she can't use him to deal with the monster anymore. That all she's doing is what Faith suggested she wanted to do years ago - let it out, enjoy it a little, be the monster. Like Xander does in Hell's Bells - Buffy realizes that she can't allow the monster inside her to destroy someone or something else. Unleashing her monster onto him is starting to tear away at her, at the part of her that isn't the monster. Here's the scene from As You Were. Buffy has just come back to Spike's bombed out crypt to break it off with him:

> BUFFY: I'm using you. I can't love you. I'm just ... being weak, and selfish...  
>  SPIKE: (moves even closer) Really not complaining here.  
>  BUFFY: ...and it's killing me. (Spike frowns.) I have to be strong about this. (He continues staring at her.) I'm sorry ... William.

B/X have come to a sort of epiphany. They've looked inside themselves and seen the monster. They've acknowledged that they can become that monster if they aren't careful. As Buffy discovered in Beauty and The Beasts - once you let the monster out…controlling it becomes more and more difficult. The Monster starts to become you. It's expressed quite well in this Scene from Beauty and the Beasts, Season 3 - In the scene Willow explains to Cordy how a normal schoolboy became a horrible monster.

> Willow: Well, we got ahold of, uh, Pete's lab books and stuff, and Mr. Science was doing a Jekyll/Hyde deal. He was afraid Debbie was gonna leave him, so he mixed this potion to become super mas macho.  
>  Buffy: The only thing was, after a while, he didn't need the potion to turn into a bad guy. He did it just fine on his own.  
>  Cordelia: So it was like a real killing. He wasn't under the influence of anything?  
>  Buffy: Just himself.

Buffy and Xander have finally figured out that loving the external monster is not the answer to dealing with their own. They can't avoid their inner monsters by thrusting the pain on someone else. That is monsterous in of itself. All they've done is create a bigger problem. Let the monster out of the box and it becomes very hard to tuck it back inside - this is something all of our characters are beginning to discover, not just B/X. Internal struggles are the toughest. It's so much easier to fight something that exists outside yourself. It's the things inside that are tough to fight. But if we don't deal with them, don't acknowledge them - then we risk doing what Mr. Science did in Beauty and the Beasts or Xander in the Pack, we risk becoming what we fear - monsters.


End file.
